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I’m spammed almost daily by people from West-Africa soliciting fro my bank account because they have a dead uncle/aunt/sister/brother/father/mother/camel with millions of dollars on a blocked bank account that they want to liberate. If I can help them, please ? Against reward of course, what do you think o a nice 10% of the total sum that is “blocked”.

Therefor we need your full name, telephone number, bank account and – oh yes – your pin could come in handy as well

I always wonder if people are still falling for this kind of scams…

They go back to the time when fax machines were the business summum of communications (the era right after telex – how old are you if you remember telex). They followed the evolution of times, started mailing people, but always with the same message. Never ever did they change the strucutre of the letter; maybe some words, sometimes a name, but never ever the structure. Lately I heard from a business relation that they turned back old school and send him a letter. Seemingly they printed the mail, put it in an envelop with a stamp (stamps – how old are you if you collected stamps) and send it on its way.

Most of the time I delete them immediately. Sometimes, I take the time to read and smirk (Cheap on line translation tools, dear West-African friends, are not always accurate – but thank you for brightening my day with the utter rubbish it produces).

The one I received lately – however – jumped out ! I published it later in this post

First of all its not a beggar letter. It has the form of a genuine business proposition, addressed to me both in French and English

Further it stands out because it does not mention a huge amount in the first paragraph, nor is it directly inquiring for my physical address, phone number or banking details.

It is honestly demanding a business partnership. Bells should start ringing because the guys is ready to invest in about anything that you can prove will be profitable.

Gratitude à traverse une parfait ET sincère collaboration.
Dear sir/madam
It is with a great pleasure that I’m writing this to you.
Therefore after having deeply reflected on the business field I’d like you to be my business partner based on faithful collaboration because I’m
looking forward to investing in any business fields in economically and politically stable countries in which foreign investors are protected and
secured by economic laws and regulations. Taking into account all these features, i respectfully step towards you to ask for sincere and faithful
collaboration in any flourishing fields of activities in the private sector.
Please would you agree to this opportunity that i kindly offer you? Or do you have anything to suggest to me on this stand?
I’m thereon available to finance any private company abiding with these features:
1-My fund (Money) injection in lucrative (Money rising) activity.
2-A fair and secured management of our common profit
3-If the listed conditions meet your faithful in sincere agreement; please let me know without any delay.

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Today, IBM and Jeopardy announced that an IBM computing system named “Watson” will compete on Jeopardy against the show’s two most successful and celebrated contestants — Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, and that the competition will air on television on February 14, 15 and 16, 2011.

Watson, named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, has been developed over the past 4 years by a team of IBM scientists who set out to accomplish a grand challenge – build a computing system that rivals a human’s ability to answer questions posed in natural language with speed, accuracy and confidence. Jeopardy provides the ultimate challenge because the game’s clues involve analyzing subtle meaning, irony, riddles, and other complexities in which humans excel and computers traditionally do not.

When the IBM scientists began this project, others in the scientific community believed this task to be impossible and the IBM scientists themselves believed the challenge was so difficult, they did not know what they would be able to achieve. This fall, the scientists achieved remarkable results, when Watson played more than 55 “sparring games” against former Jeopardy Tournament of Champions contestants. Highlights of the sparring matches can be viewed and tracked over the next few weeks at IBMWatson.com

Watson is the most recent example of how IBM’s approximate $6 billion per year investment in R&D is spurring new technologies to help build a smarter planet — driving progress in areas such as healthcare, biology, energy, water resources, food safety, and more.

Watson’s ability to understand the meaning and context of human language, and rapidly process information to find precise answers to complex questions, holds enormous potential to transform how computers help people accomplish tasks in business and their personal lives. Watson will enable people to rapidly find specific answers to complex questions. The technology could be applied in areas such as healthcare, for accurately diagnosing patients, to improve online self-service help desks, to provide tourists and citizens with specific information regarding cities, prompt customer support via phone, and much more.

Like Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer that defeated the reigning world chess champion in 1997, Watson represents a major leap in the capacity of information technology systems to identify patterns, gain critical insight and enhance decision-making despite daunting complexity. But while Deep Blue was an amazing achievement in the application of compute power to a computationally well-defined and well-bounded game, Watson faces a challenge that is open-ended and defies the well-bounded mathematical formulation of a game like Chess. Watson has to operate in the near limitless, ambiguous and highly contextual domain of human language and knowledge.

Watson’s patented technology furthers IBM’s leadership in analytics solutions, which help organizations use the vast amount of information they collect to improve their business operations and service to their customers. Additionally, Watson harnesses IBM’s commercial Power 7 system, showcasing how IBM workload-optimized systems provide unmatched capabilities for processing thousands of simultaneous tasks at rapid speeds, once the realm of only scientific supercomputers.

In his 2009 letter to shareholders, Sam Palmisano said: Many companies are reacting to the current global downturn by drastically curtailing spending and investment, even in areas that are important to their future. We’re not looking back, we’re looking ahead. We’re continuing to invest in R&D, in strategic acquisitions, in growth initiatives— and most importantly, during these difficult times, in our people. In other words, we will not simply ride out the storm. Rather, we will take a long-term view, and go on offense. Throughout our history, during periods of disruption and global change, this is what IBM has done. Again and again, we have played a leadership role. We have imagined what the world might be, and actually built it.

Watson is the latest example of IBM scientists imagining what might be and inventing it. On February 14, 15 and 16, the world will see the result of their imagination and ingenuity compete against two of the world’s most successful and celebrated Jeopardy champions.

The index give some interesting insights at how 287 European and North American companies, all part of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, the industry standard in identifying which companies operate the most sustainable business practices, are using social media to tell their stories.

Key findings of the report:

85% use social media as some part of their general communications portfolio be it for PR, customer service or marketing.

22% have social media communications dedicated to sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) issues.

19% rely on their general social media channels to talk about sustainability.

58% have no social media conduit whatsoever for discussing sustainability.

Of the North American companies, 36% are using some form of social media to communicate sustainability issues.

33% of the European companies listed are doing so.

Technology is the leading sector in embracing sustainability social media comms with tech companies making up 20 percent of the total North American companies listed.

Oil & Gas is the sector least represented is this survey. Just four of the 25 oil and gas companies surveyed were using social media to talk about sustainability issues. (BP anyone?)

As a methodology they used focused on the ways companies are using social media to communicate sustainability to external
stakeholders, including the public, the media, shareholders, NGOs and employees. SMI based their evaluation on the following
criteria.

Does the company:

1. have a dedicated social media voice/channel for sustainability communication?
2. use existing social media channels to talk about sustainability?
3. use social media to communicate specific sustainability campaigns/causes?
4. discuss sustainability topics in general?
5. discuss and highlight action it is taking to be more sustainable?
6. make its annual corporate responsibility report shareable through social media?
7. bring sustainability issues to life with engaging content and storytelling?
8. enable community feedback/interaction on sustainability issues?

In the technology sector, IBM gathered a Social Score of 97, bringing this – almost 100 years old – company to the leader place in the sector. Overall, General Electric scores 1 point more than IBM.

Sector

Company

Social Score

Basic Materials

Alcoa

59

Consumer Goods

Ford

95

Consumer Services

Starbucks

95

Financials

Allianz

90

Healthcare

Novartis

80

Industrials

GE

98

Oil & Gas

ENI

55

Technology

IBM

97

Telecoms

Telefonica

79

Utilities

PG&E

85

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IBM (NYSE:IBM) announced recently that the National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP) has adopted IBM software to speed the processing time of matching information related to donors with bone marrow transplant patients.

The NMDP is using IBM software that incorporates advanced analytics to streamline the record matching process by automatically comparing millions of data records nationwide. These records include donor information, geographic location and patient recipient data. The objective of the project is to dramatically speed bone marrow transplants which currently average 96 days.

The NMDP estimates that as many as 10,000 patients may benefit from a transplant each year in the US alone.

“Many of these patients need a transplant quickly to treat their life-threatening disease,” said, Jeffrey W. Chell, M.D., chief executive officer of the NMDP. “We expect this new system to significantly reduce the time to transplant. This will help more patients get the transplant they need, when they need it.”

“This breakthrough at the NMDP is a prime example of how health analytics can be used to mine data in new ways and streamline processes,” said Dan Pelino, general manager, IBM healthcare and life sciences. “New approaches to analyzing patient data are advancing the state of medicine and influencing research. IBM has made a significant investment in analytics over the years and applied this expertise to healthcare with literally life-saving results.”

A bone marrow or umbilical cord blood transplant can be used to treat patients with life-threatening blood, immune system or genetic disorders. The NMDP currently facilitates more than 5,000 transplants using unrelated donors or cord blood units each year. The NMDP operates the Be The Match Registry® of more than 8 million potential donors and more than 160,000 cord blood units. Through cooperative relationships with international registries, the organization provides access to a total of 14 million potential donors worldwide.

IBM’s WebSphereLombardi software gives organizations the ability to quickly adjust their business processes to support sudden and changing needs—especially those that rely heavily on collaboration to complete a task or project. As a result, the NMDP is able to automate its screening processes, eliminating the need for complicated and time-consuming technical intervention, and allowing staff to focus on records that meet the matching criteria.

IBM is working with partners and clients to create a smarter, more connected healthcare system that delivers better care with fewer mistakes, predicts and prevents diseases and empowers people to make better choices. IBM supports the nation’s leading healthcare providers such as Mayo, Kaiser, UPMC, Duke University Health System and Geisinger Health System with a broad range of technology and business solutions. This work extends from connecting electronic medical records among doctors, hospitals and pharmacies to improving care and reducing cost, to accelerating medical research with deep analytics that discover how well drugs work, to providing genomic advances that will help shape personalized patient care.

About the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP)
As a leader in the field of unrelated marrow and umbilical cord blood transplantation, the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) is dedicated to ensuring all patients who need a transplant receive access to this potentially life-saving treatment. Headquartered in Minneapolis, the nonprofit organization has been entrusted by the federal government through the C.W. Bill Young Transplantation Program to operate the national registry, publicly known as the Be The Match Registry, which provides a single point of access for transplant centers and patients to marrow donors and cord blood units. The organization also facilitates transplants worldwide; supports a global network of hospitals, blood centers, public cord blood banks, laboratories and recruitment centers; conducts research; and provides education and support to patients, donors and health care professionals. The NMDP has facilitated more than 40,000 transplants since operation began in 1987. For more information, visit http://www.marrow.org or call 1 (800) MARROW-2.

For more information on how IBM is helping clients and partners make smarter, faster healthcare decisions and increase their business performance, visit: http://www.ibm.com/smarterhealthcare

Hundreds of Global Companies Turn to IBM to Tackle Their Most Complex Information-Related Challenges

Press Release: -LAS VEGAS: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that more than 700 SAP clients have turned to IBM DB2 database software to manage heavy database workloads for improved performance at a lower cost. As pressure increases on businesses to process increasing amounts of data faster, hundreds of global companies are choosing DB2 database software to address their most complex information-related management challenges. In fact, IBM is the preferred database software across all industries to provide more efficient and flexible support of the heavy database workload generated by SAP applications. CIOs are looking to establish information infrastructures that are flexible and can grow with the business, as well as to simplify and automate processes, according to a recent IBM CIO study. In fact, 74 percent of the 2,500 CIOs surveyed said that continuous business process improvement is a priority to achieve greater efficiency and increase competitiveness. In addition to the 700 new clients turning to IBM DB2, IBM has also seen significant momentum in our systems business with close to 250 Power Systems wins over Sun and HP in 3Q alone…